Description
Betterbird is an enhanced version of Mozilla Thunderbird, being a "soft fork" that closely follows Thunderbird releases, especially the ESR (Extended Support Release) versions. It offers an optimized user experience, focusing on three main areas: unique new features, more frequent bug fixes, and solutions that Thunderbird can incorporate later. Below is a more detailed description.
Main Features
- Unique New Features:
- Multi-line View: Similar to Outlook, it allows for a multi-line message display, ideal for a more organized view (activated in View > Layout > Multi-line View).
- Advanced Customization: Includes options like colors for accounts, customizable buttons in the header panel, support for regular expressions in searches, and quick filters for messages without tags.
- System Tray Integration: Displays icons with unread message counts, something not present in Thunderbird.
- Others: Support for searching in encrypted messages, attachments displayed above messages, vertical tabs, and initial folder selection.
- Bug Fixes:
- Betterbird fixes longstanding bugs in Thunderbird that affect stability and usability, such as performance issues in virtual folders, failures in moving messages in mbox format, and incorrect rendering of conditional CSS.
- Many fixes are sent to Thunderbird for possible future inclusion, but Betterbird implements them more quickly.
- Security:
- Includes frequent security patches and features like remote content blocking by default (with an option to unblock).
- Supports PGP encryption for privacy and protection against attacks like EFAIL.
- Compatibility:
- Can be installed alongside Thunderbird and use the same profile, facilitating testing without data loss.
- Compatible with most Thunderbird add-ons, such as ThunderHTMLedit, Quick Folder Move Classic, and Shrunked Image Resizer.
- Offers specific language packs for Betterbird, covering additional functionalities (not compatible with Thunderbird packs).